Thursday, August 27, 2009

A while ago Mike posted about the dearth of bike parking in Aukland. A few days ago the Bike Snob posted about an article in Slate Magazine about bike parking being a way to coax people into commuting by bike. As usual witty criticisms followed.

Because I am a dork, and I am not repulsed by the terms "zoning" and "regulation," I read the article. I was expecting dork talk, but instead I found this awesome video. I seriously can't get over how cool this is. I'm sure it costs some moola, but with $2 billion of the stimulus packing going to over 5,000 bike and pedestrian projects, there has to some money kicking around for an undergound, automatic bike rack. I would like to see it shaped like a dragon, you put the bike up against it's lips and a big, mechanical tongue comes out and it swallows your bike whole. Now that would get people riding more often.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Rode out to a little town called Tamaki the other day. Wasn't a massive ride but my ass got sore enough for me to want to take a train home. I need to get some kind of butt pad that isn't paired by destiny to spandex. After riding around an unfamiliar town for a while I stepped up to the platform and waited for the train back to Auckland. The train pulled up and a ticket taker waved me over to the front of the train. Apparently there are only two of these to accommodate any and all bikers. Here in Auckland biker khotspa (yitish) isn't really feverish. The design of the bike stands are pretty cool even though the ticket taker asked a few middle aged women to move so I could collapse the seat they were on for my bike to rest.

The seat-belt was a nice touch and sat with piece of mind.

On separate note, the kids I teach at church need to complete a bunch of biking requirements from the physical preparedness section of their Duty to God Award. So I'm planning a 20 miler and a bike safety course. Any readers or contributors out their that could send some materials my way for bike safety are thanked in advance.